I was a Kitchener Scholar at the University of Cambridge, where I was awarded an Entrance Prize by Trinity College (pictured above) and the Philpott Prize for a first class examination performance in Tort Law.

You can click on the title ‘Cambridge’ above to see my degree certificate.

In addition to academic work, my proudest achievement was publishing Ivory Tower, a book about undergraduate life. Click here to see my pride at discovering the University Library at Cambridge has two copies in the Rare Books Room, where it also keeps only one copy of Newton’s Principia.

Open university

After graduating from Cambridge I founded and edited MXpress, a newspaper for young people that sold over 30,000 copies. My ambition had always been to teach, however, and I began my career by taking a degree with the Open University, where I studied Mathematics and Physics. I won the Leslie Walshaw Award for scoring 100% in the examination in Mathematical Models and Methods. (In fact I achieved first class passes in every assignment and examination I took throughout the degree.) I subsequently taught mathematics at the Open University as an Associate Lecturer.

lifelong learning

I love learning and believe it’s important for teachers to also be students. I spent a year at the University of York, where I studied second year Physics and I was an Enterprise Fellow at York St John University, where I studied Business.